Oh I am falling woefully behind. Today I realized that I am leaving the UK in 8 days, and there is so much stuff to get done beforehand. Lots of places to see and go that I haven’t done yet, not to mention all the packing. Oh the packing. I hate packing. I move like every 8 months, seriously. That’s probably not going to end anytime soon, either. Laundry to wash and hang, volunteering to do, grocery shopping, teach Ben to cook some things, return my library books. Holy cow. So forgive me if the posts are erratic from now on. But I just wanted to throw up some pictures here of last week, Ben and I had a date night, walked downtown, saw another art show, went to dinner. We went to the mongolian grill restaurant downtown and we were really, really hoping it would live up the the Chang’s standard. That’s a high bar to set, no? Well it was pretty good, but completely different than Chang’s. We were so caught off guard by the differences that the hostess thought we were confused (stupid?) and felt the need to explain the whole thing to us. We had to smile and be polite, of course, because we couldn’t very well say “oh we know exactly how it works” because we were acting like total spazes. This place has a few things going for it that are different: wider range of veg, different sauces (fish sauce, green curry paste, sweet chili, BBQ, satay) and also dry spices (oregano, curry powder, paprika) so you can make all kinds of crazy combinations. I tried a mexi-bowl with corn and beef and kidney beans and tomatoes. I also tried a couple curry things, though it doesn’t really work because the whole point of curry is having all that luscious sauce, which just evaporates on the grill. I ate six bowls. Six. Before you faint, let me show you a picture of the bowls.

proof that size does matter

That is not an optical illusion. The restaurant has the smallest bowls on the planet. It’s more like a bowl I would use for ice cream. If I were on a diet. It kinda ruined the whole experience because a big part of the fun is piling your bowl high and scarfing it down. This tiny bowl was one of the things that confused us most. “Um, ar we supposed to use these bowls?” I asked the hostess…oops. Ben and I fasted that day in preparation for stuffing our faces. Oh well, at least I got some spicy potatoes out of the deal. Had a nice chat with the grill guy, too.
Here are just a couple other pictures of town. It was in the 70s for several days and you’d think it was the apocalypse or something. Everyone was out, crowding every public space, drinking beer and getting sunburned. Very sunburned. Apparently Brits don’t believe in sunblock. Ben and I, on the other hand, slathered it on.

a park known as The Level

And another

one of the many tiny alleys

This last one is for Tiffany. I think it’s a sign. I think we need to get our butts to The Victory on Division, asap.